


What happened to Jon?

by DottyDot



Series: GoT Meta [2]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Character Analysis, Dany fans will not like, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:08:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25050646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DottyDot/pseuds/DottyDot
Summary: This was originally posted on Quora back in May.
Series: GoT Meta [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1394581
Comments: 8
Kudos: 9





	What happened to Jon?

Q: How do you explain the sudden change in Jon Snow in s8?

A: There was something different about Jon? You didn’t think Jon going from saving the Free Folk to defending the incineration of the population of KL believable? You didn’t think Jon killing his own man to save a civilian only to (in the next episode) adopt the view that when friends die you sometimes burn a city to the ground was natural character progression? You didn’t think that angry Jon Snow marching off to confront Dany about the slaughter of POWs was the clear precursor to his scene with Tyrion in which his stance seems to have changed to, “Oh, she wants to do this _everywhere?_ Well, as long as she’s an equal opportunity mass murderer, we’re good!”

The truth is that what you are perceiving as a “sudden change” in Jon is not character progression or regression, it is simply the sad evidence that D&D didn’t give two shits, one shit, or even half a shit (do I have that right? I’m not fluent in shit currency) about Jon. Just about every character’s story was tanked in order to hide Dark Dany until the last possible second, which was pretty self-defeating as in order to hide it, they also damaged her story, but no one suffered more than Jon who only existed to do three things in s8: kick Dany’s paranoia into high gear by telling her about his parentage, make her feel abandoned by rejecting her sexual advances, kill her.

I’m not overstating how neglected Jon was because even while he completed his tasks, there was no consensus as to _why_. Was he wanting to avoid sex with his aunt or was he hoping to assume his “real name” without it causing political/personal problems for them? Was he grossed out by the incest with Dany or was he turned off by the fact that she killed his friend’s family/threatened his? Did he kill Dany for justice/out of duty or for love of the Starks? Other characters say what they think is going on with Jon, everyone in the audience had their opinion, but Jon doesn’t get the chance to clarify. Even his ending was a question mark. Whatever they thought the story was, what we saw simply doesn’t coalesce.

We’re _told_ that Jon was thinking with his dick until he couldn’t put it in his aunt anymore (way to be a killjoy, Bran), so then he’s wandering around the s8 hellscape, incapable of thinking, until Tyrion, who led Jon into a trap by bringing him to Dragonstone under the misconception that they would be allies instead of telling him he was summoned to bend the knee, who had to talk Dany down from burning cities in the past, who witnessed Dany burn POWs alive and still defended her, _that guy_ becomes the voice of moral authority in the finale and tells Jon where to put it. (The knife, not his dick.) If the story was that Jon was truly that useless, if he had lost all sense and morality, they needed to finish the job.

If Jon was _really_ that far gone, in the finale, he should have fallen to his knees before his queen, incapable of killing her, incapable of saving his sisters, incapable of anything, only able to beg, “ _Dany, please_.” Dany’s conquest of Westeros began with Drogo’s promise to take it for their son in a scene with Varys begging on his knees, so it could have worked well to have her conquest end in a scene that echoed it. And then Arya could have killed Dany so all her “I’m going to kill the queen” talk could come true (in a way). I mean, if the idea was to dismantle Jon’s hero status and bring him low, don’t let him save the day, commit to it. _Make him fail_. And then, with Dany dead, Jon has nothing left. He failed his people, he failed his family, and he had to watch while the person he gave it all away for dies—he failed his queen. That Jon might reject his punishment. He has no honor, he has nothing, why would he accept it? That Jon might just say “fuck it” and lose himself in the true North. But, that’s not what they did.

Is his story that, just like Dany, he became the thing he always tried not to be? Dany became her father (worse than!), and Jon discovers he isn’t a bastard by birth, but his actions damn him as one? He not only takes the crown when a trueborn Stark is sitting right there, knowing that a trueborn male Stark has returned to the North, he gives it to a Targaryen? That he is a man so controlled by lust he gives away his country and all his principles, refuses to hear reason, even after he knows the woman in question is his aunt? And then, after doing all of _that_ , he betrays the woman he betrayed everything else for? If this is the story, I don’t think Jon would accept a happy ending (they made escaping with the Free Folk his desired end in 8x04). Due to his long-standing self-loathing and shame he would _choose_ punishment, choose to stay at the Wall. But, that’s not what they did.

Going into s8 I thought our two options with Jon were that he knew what Dany was and was using her, or he didn’t know and genuinely believed in her. Tyrion knew what Dany was and Jon always argued for the same humane approach that Tyrion wanted, so I assumed the former. Of course, they also carefully kept Jon ignorant of certain things in s7, so they left the second option open. If Jon _didn’t_ know what Dany was, they needed him to have a moment of realization. We didn’t get that. People argued with me that that’s what happened during the burning of KL, but I said he acted horrified, _not_ shocked. And, now that we’ve seen parts of the script from 8x05, we know there was a deleted bit in which Jon tells Tyrion before they’ve attacked the city that Dany won’t allow a surrender. That’s why Kit wasn’t acting Jon as shocked when everything went to shit. Jon knew. He realized what Dany was capable of, and whether that was when she burned Varys, or when she threatened Sansa, or when she said she wanted to attack KL way back in s7, at some point, Jon knew. That exchange with Varys in which he says Jon knows what Dany will do wasn’t filler. He did, and he accepted it. We can’t pinpoint _when_ he figured this out which is a problem, but since it seems he was open to giving her a pass for burning children alive, maybe that doesn’t matter.

What matters is that at some (unidentifiable) point, Jon knew, and unless this was about honoring his oath as he claimed, it means that _Jon’s love for Dany overrode everything else_. If that was Jon’s story, he should have been brought to trial in the finale and Bran should have sentenced him to the Wall for his wrongs (being the military leader during the sacking of KL) against the Westerosi as it is Bran’s job to seek justice for his people. And when Arya and Sansa protested, Bran should have looked at Jon and delivered a third three-eyed raven moment, “ _how about my queen,_ ” indicating the extent of how far Jon’s wrongs ran, that he betrayed their trust and lied to them in order to drag the Northern armies South. Remember how it is Jon who tells Bran not to look away as his father beheads a man? If Jon’s end was about justice, Bran should have looked Jon in the eyes as he delivered his sentence, signaling that Bran is the one who will continue Ned’s legacy. _But_ , _that’s not what they did._ When Jon kneels before Bran, there is no recrimination.

That’s baffling. Jon is not responsible for Dany’s actions, but he is responsible for his actions and his _in_ action. I thought he was terrified of her and trying to keep her pacified, trying to protect people, but it is a very different thing if we are meant to interpret him as a true believer, regardless of all the red flags. His motivation changes his actions, but he has barely any meaningful dialogue in s8, so all we can do is take a stance and argue it.

I was thinking about Longclaw. It’s a Mormont who gave Jon that sword, and it’s that man’s niece who tells off Stannis, who eventually follows Jon to war, who names Jon king and denounces him when he returns from Dragonstone. Think about the sound of Lyanna Mormont’s bones crunching as she dies. Jon betrayed _her_. She made him king and he gave her freedom away to a hated house after he acknowledged his people _would never bow to a Southern ruler_. Lyanna stood up and declared Jon her king until his last day, but on _her_ last day, Jon was not her king. She had to die without her freedom, with the final words from him on the subject, _it isn’t important_. Jon betrayed the trust she put in him which was a follow-up to the trust her uncle put in him, and all we get from Jon is an inscrutable glance at Dany over her corpse in 8x04. Jorah wouldn’t take Longclaw from Jon because he was unworthy, but, during the last few minutes of the show, Jon picks up that sword, and he wears it, as if he is still deserving, even after he did _that_ to Mormont’s niece. Even after he failed the people of Westeros by serving the one who brought fire and blood to KL. And yet, D&D don’t care.

They have Jon smile at the end of the finale to show that he’s at peace with what he did, but that’s because D&D were _only_ thinking about his “crime” of killing Dany and ignoring everything else they made him do in s7-8 to get him to that point. Wouldn’t he think of Lyanna each time he picked up his sword? Each time he sits by a fire wouldn’t he hear the screams of Dany’s victims? Even after her death, the focus never truly shifted off of Dany, and we end s8 without any serious consideration given to Jon at all. He wasn’t just neglected by the final cut of s8, D&D did not have a real story for him at all, because while Jon fans bemoaned his behavior, thought his defense of mass murder was as tragic as watching him die, in the finale script, there is no _intentional_ deconstruction of a hero. They even note how the Free Folk view Jon with trust as if he’s still worthy. D&D still believe that _Jon is Jon_ which means that they thought the label of “hero” they stuck on his forehead was all the care he needed.

They gave us wildly divergent versions of Jon simultaneously and never bothered to reconcile it all which made s8 feel a bit like witnessing history and revisionist history at the same time. In 8x01 Sansa asks: _Did you bend the knee to save the North or because you love her_? Is Jon a self-sacrificing hero or a fool in love? I was told there was no way Jon could manipulate Dany because he’s too honorable, so how is he then manipulating Sansa/Sam/his people? So little consideration was given to keeping Jon consistent, I think he must have been written around what they were willing/unwilling to do regarding Dany’s story, because while they say Jon _can’t_ lie, the story we’re given is one in which he _is_ lying. When I think about s7-8, the most bizarre thing about what D&D did wasn’t how they portrayed Jon, but the fact that _they didn’t expect us to take it seriously_.

A contributing element to this debacle is that D&D really love surprises. They think that making characters incoherent is a reasonable tradeoff for a moment of shock, and then they offer rationalizations after the fact that don’t make sense (Arya/Sansa in s7). One of their surprises in s8 was Arya falling out of the sky to kill the Night King, right before which they revert her to scared little girl for maximum effect. Dany saves Westeros a few episodes before announcing she’s gonna burn it all. Jon defends Dany right before he kills her. Their form of dramatic tension is to go to one extreme and then the other. They also opt for acting rather than dialogue, but when characters are doing heel turns, we need the dialogue to explain.

But, the biggest factor in this mess might be that they allowed Dany + dragons to become the most important part of GoT financially, and then decided that the last season was about her, not the Stark kids, not Jon, not the North, not the fate of Westeros. Even after she goes bad, everything still revolves around Dany. The finale is written with the assumption that the audience would be mourning Dany, so even while we get the necessary “being a tyrant is bad” lip service, what D&D emotionally offered us was that the tragedy is Dany’s death, not _what she chose to become_.

I think this odd warping of everything around Dany was also influenced by the fact that Dany is a feminist icon and to have her die at the hands of her lover was brutal. As in, I knew she was going bad, I knew there was a good chance Jon would kill her, but I haven’t been able to rewatch the show since the finale because while Jon did have to kill Dany, romanticizing it, having him kiss her as they’re standing in the ashes of her victims, as he sticks the knife in, it’s _really_ sick. Witnessing the meltdown among those who thought Dany was a hero, I can easily imagine a calculated decision was made to reduce Jon’s agency as it lessens his culpability in the audience’s eyes. Just think about how many of Jon’s conversations are abruptly cut off, how his dialogue is so repetitive throughout the season, how even in the finale, he is largely passive in his scenes with Tyrion. Hallowing him out was a season long endeavor, that had a lot more to do with optics than storytelling.

Now, as for what Jon’s story is? According to D&D Jon is a fool in love who is just kinda, pushed around by Sansa, Dany, and Tyrion. **But** , I’m personally very invested in wrong answers, and I have one! My tendency is to look back on previous seasons and find the recurring ideas because while characterization may be derailed as necessary for their twists, if it’s an embedded idea, a recurring theme, that means it is intentional which matters. GoT (when it reflects in a _vague_ way what Martin is doing in ASOIAF) is like predictive text with foils and parallels all over the place paving the way for what’s going to happen.

Jaime is one of Jon’s foils, and this quote about his own struggle predicts Jon’s s8 pretty well:

“So many vows…they make you swear and swear. Defendthe king. Obeythe king. Obey your father. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. And what if your father despises the king? What if the king massacres the innocent? It’s too much. No matter what you do, you’re forsaking one vow or another” (2x07).

Jon seems passive in s8, and yet, we still saw this play out. He verbally _defends_ Dany to people all season (Sansa & Sam 8x01, Arya & Sansa 8x04, Varys 8x05, Tyrion 8x06). Jon tells Dany he will _obey_ her in 8x04. Even though he doesn’t want to go South, even though Sansa _despises_ Dany, Jon insists that he must because he swore himself to Dany. But then, Dany _massacres the innocent_. And she has it out for Sansa whom Jon had promised to protect. Whichever choice he made in the end, he was _forsaking one vow or another_.

The lines from the show are very similar to the passage from the book which includes two more that make this foreshadowing of Jon’s eventual struggle even more on the nose, “Keep his (the king’s) secrets” and “Love your sister” (Catelyn VII, _A Clash of Kings_ ).

Dany commanded Jon to keep his parentage a _secret_. And Jon agreed to keep it from everyone else, but he had to tell Arya and Sansa. And so, it all unravels. He doesn’t keep Dany’s (his) secret. When fighting in KL he stops, he can’t obey her. He chooses to _protect_ and _defend_ the innocent/weak instead, killing his own man to do so. Jon still doesn’t want to act against Dany, but he _loves his sister(s)_ , so he kills her.

Honor leading to downfall, strict adherence to codes rather than your own ethics leading to catastrophe, are interesting ideas because if you define yourself as good _only_ if you follow those codes, doing the right thing feels wrong. It’s a shame they just shortchanged all of this with “he’s in love” when Jon is clearly torn and conflicted, we just don’t get it verbalized much. When the girls try to convince Jon not to go South in 8x04, his response is that he has to because he swore himself to Dany, which seems dismissive, even disingenuous knowing his secret relationship with Dany, but then he tells Tormund he would rather go with him ie Jon feels _compelled_ to go South, against his own wishes, his own morals, but he must do his duty. He always, even when reclaiming Winterfell, is acting in the defense of life, to save someone, so him not wanting to go is understandable. Going to war for a throne is simply not a cause he believes in. Sansa’s emotional reaction to Jon going South reminded me of the despair that Cat felt when she tried to convince Ned not to go South in s1:

Ned: “I have no choice.”

Cat: “That’s what men always say when honor calls. That’s what you tell your families. Tell yourselves. You do have a choice. And you’ve made it.”

The dueling obligations between family and honor was not only Jon’s struggle in s8, or Ned’s in s1, or Jaime’s, it’s presented to Jon by Aemon with another quote that captures Jon’s struggle in the finale (talk about that in the previous entry in this series), and it all ties together with the burden that comes with making a choice when both outcomes are horrible. For most of season 8, Jon is caught, trapped by incompatible demands.

Jaime struggled with his actions so _of course_ Jon is going to wrestle with his, and while I hated to see it, the idea that being a better man (Jon) may lead you to permit evil (burning KL) that a less moral man (Jaime) prevented is a pretty great way to bring home the point that doing the “right thing” (honoring an oath) can be worse than doing the “wrong thing” (breaking your oath). This breaks down the rigid dichotomy. Right and wrong are no longer distinct, distant things, they’re inextricably bound. You cannot do one without doing the other. The fact that both the Jaime and the Aemon quote foreshadowed everything Jon would face, that s8 is a repeat of s1 is no accident. Even if D&D wouldn’t commit to it, whether they, as with Robb substituted romantic love in the place of honor, or merely over-emphasized it to the exclusion of Jon’s multifaceted struggle, this is all still there. S7-8 Jon is basically answering the question: _how can you do right when all you can do is wrong?_ Sadly, for Jon, there is no winning. Victory is defeat. I think that’s his story in s8.

As far as his characterization goes, they introduced and dropped elements of a different post-resurrection Jon that if consistent could have given him a compelling arc in s7-8. We had glimpses of a darker Jon, glimpses of a broken Jon, but I never felt that they committed to either. If they wanted darker Jon, we would need him to embrace violence in a way he hadn’t before, but instead, while he has two flashes of violence, he speaks openly about hating killing. If they had gone further with that, it could have led Jon to willingly participate in Dany’s conquest rather than the clearly uncomfortable but unbearably obedient version we had. Jon was certainly traumatized after his resurrection, but I thought we saw him recovering somewhat during s6-7. Initially when trying to gather support to retake the North Jon’s body language exudes his insecurity. He clearly still suffers and is in a hopeless state but reclaiming Winterfell _matters_. Becoming KitN _matters_. Jon asserts his authority as king over Sansa and then goes on to be belligerent to Dany in s7 because of what this means to him. Contrast Jon’s behavior in his first meeting with Dany with his behavior when talking to Glover or Lyanna in s6. He goes from being uncomfortable, sometimes not being able to look people in the eyes, to facing off with a conqueror who has dragons. You don’t bring him to that point and _then_ try to say that Jon is now a weak/obedient servant. It doesn’t track.

And that’s the thing. Psychologically, emotionally, we are missing essential “triggers” for Jon to explain his actions. Imagine you don’t get to sit at the table with your brothers or even attend certain feasts because you’re a bastard, and then one day, the people who have always looked down on you declare you _their king_. To have the people who rejected you _apologize_ and raise you up as the best of them, to choose _you_ , to want to follow _you_ , that burrows deep. It isn’t believable that the acceptance of people who don’t give a shit (Free Folk, Dany) hits Jon harder than people _who do_ and yet put all that aside because _you_ showed them that they were wrong, because they think _you_ are worth it, because they respect _you_. I don’t think Jon was a broken man come s7, I think he was a desperate man. Since reuniting with Sansa, he is as close to being a Stark as he had ever been which is _“the first thing I ever remember wanting.”_ And, it being Cat’s lookalike, the sister who didn’t have anything to do with him before, now embracing him, that has to have been a mindfuck in a _good_ way. I think it would be harder for Jon to betray that newfound acceptance than it would for the Stark kids who had never been excluded in the first place. There is a despair in his love for the Starks that is heartbreaking, and I don’t see how that could ever be supplanted when falling in love with Ygritte didn’t alter his loyalty to the Watch/the North.

That’s why using a romantic relationship to suddenly be Jon’s motivating factor felt very off. We were told by the show that it wouldn’t. We even saw in s7-8 that his desire to protect the North and his family was greater than his love for Dany. But they simultaneously wanted us to believe that his devotion to Dany had superseded it, even though in order to imply that, they reduced him to standing around _squinting_ and very much _existing_ on screen. They turned Jon into negative space _defined by a relationship_ not for the purpose of bringing him low (they refuse to let him be condemned), but as set up for us to wonder if he will stop Dany from killing his family _after_ she’s massacred the people of KL. That’s a decision that will never make sense when either of those would be enough to motivate him to act which means the _function_ of the relationship is a non-starter.

And even if the writers convinced themselves that that was a good idea, the specifics of how they wrote the relationship are off too. For instance, Jon meets Dany and says she’s better than Cersei because she hasn’t attacked KL, and then in the next episode, Jon finds out that Tyrion is the one talking Dany down, that _Dany_ wants to. You can’t hold a character responsible for not knowing what the audience knows, but each interaction between Jon/Dany reinforced just how incompatible their priorities and goals are, and Jon reacts negatively consistently. I think the most glaring instance of this problem is that Jon loves his family _more than anything_ (that fact is the climax of the entire series) and yet witnesses Dany threaten Tyrion’s family. From the audience’s perspective we think “Cersei’s evil—she had it coming.” But in-world? Jon’s people have no intention of kneeling. Jon’s family wants nothing to do with Targs. Hearing Dany tell her advisor, “My enemies? _Your family_ ” would scare the shit out of him. The failure of the relationship is dismissed as “lack of chemistry,” but it’s the writing that undermines the relationship more than anything, even more than Kit’s acting. I genuinely thought they were writing a one-sided romance with Jon realizing who Dany was because they were so consistent with exposing her hypocrisy to him from their first meeting in which she doesn’t want to be blamed for her father’s crimes but expects Jon to honor the oath of his forefather, to the fact that she takes his weapons and ships but refuses to admit he’s her prisoner, all the way to her bemoaning the fact that dragons had to be locked away in the Dragonpit even though Jorah had just explained it was for the safety of humans. Of course, seeing as how most fans didn’t find any of that an issue, I guess the writers decided to bank on _the audience’s_ feelings for Dany rather than do the work themselves.

If we _must_ have the relationship (it went from will they/wont they to “you can stop now this is creepy” really fast!), and they didn’t want Jon to be tarnished, they shouldn’t have acted like physical proximity dictated Jon’s loyalty. Jon fully capitulates everything he’s always been (loyal to the Starks/the North) for Dany, only for D&D to maintain that none of that really changed come s8. Instead of saying this is an either/or, he is loyal to Dany _or_ the North, they should have done both/and. Jon remains loyal to the North _and_ becomes increasingly loyal to Dany. Jon/Dany should have agreed to be allies with Dany coming North and then Jon going South in a quid pro quo arrangement. In s7 we had the repetition of “bend the knee,” in s8 “my queen,” which emphasized the power imbalance in the relationship to the detriment of the romance. If they’re allies, Jon doesn’t have to lie (I’m still not sure that he did or if it was a retcon) which would allow him to rigorously defend Dany to the Northern Lords, selling the relationship, his admiration, his loyalty to the audience as well as the characters which _you must do_ if you want our reaction to be anything but “ _finally!_ ” when he kills Dany. We can still have tension in the North because Dany is a Targ with dragons which makes them nervous, and their (seemingly) unfounded suspicion would emotionally push Jon further into Dany’s corner. Jon would identify with Dany because he knows what it is like to be viewed with unwarranted suspicion because of his father’s sin.

Doing the allies version would have meant that all their teasing of “dark Sansa” wasn’t just misdirection. Littlefinger planted the idea of a Jon/Dany marriage, and Sansa could have acted _against Jon_ (who would have still been her king) because she didn’t want him to tie them to the Iron Throne with Dany on it. If Jon really was supposed to be blinded by love, then we deserved to see Sansa act against _him_ , telling the audience implicitly that Sansa, not Jon, was the true protector of the North. The benefit of this is that there would have been _legitimate_ grievances between Jon and Sansa. Sansa betraying Jon would explain why she _wouldn’t_ pardon him, why he would resent the hell out of her, and why Arya yeets herself out of Westeros. Arya would be angry with Sansa and not want to stay in the North, angry with Bran for punishing Jon even though he saved the realm so not want to be in the South, but also _sickened_ with Jon for siding with a mass murderer and therefore, not able to bear being near him. If the story was about Jon’s failure, we needed to see some sort of fallout from _his_ choices.

Instead, in the show, the Northerners and Sansa are reasonably distrustful and angry, and Jon’s total disregard for their feelings makes no sense, especially when the only reason he was able to get Dany as an ally, the only reason they had any hope of stopping the Night King, was because Sansa understood the importance of securing the North. Jon may not lust after power, but his political position is what got him what they needed to survive, and he’s trailing around after a woman who is obsessed with a throne, so it’s a bizarre thing all around, particularly as _Jon_ is the one who claimed his kingship was why Dany might listen to him back in s7. And, perhaps the most damning thing is that in the same episode that Jon is arguing that politics don’t matter, he is reunited with Arya. The moment Jon holds Arya in his arms again is _Sansa’s victory_ , having a safe place for the siblings to return was one of the reasons she gave Jon for why they _had_ to take back the North. Furthermore, it is Jon’s chosen queen who becomes a direct threat to the family, something that would haunt him, kicking off the whole cycle of Southern rulers being a threat to the Starks/the North all over again, the very thing Sansa was trying to protect them from.

Anyway, in spite of this absurdity, the writers still don’t turn on Jon which makes me think the knee bend had to happen for the love vs duty Aemon quote to make sense and the Jaime parallel, because the only narrative purpose it served was to make Dany Jon’s queen/duty in the finale. Of course, the knee bend also allows s8 to play like s1 in another way. In s1 Cat references the last time Ned went South and returned with Jon ie the last time he left her, he betrayed her. In s7 Jon leaves the North in Sansa’s keeping and comes home having given it to another woman. He betrayed her. Of course, Ned _didn’t_ betray Cat, he was keeping a promise to his sister. And, I know, Jon is a dumbfuck blah blah blah, but in s8, he is re-living previously introduced struggles and ideas, taking on _multiple roles simultaneously_ many of which are lost in the bloodbath of logic that was s8. For instance, Jon gets to be in Joffrey’s _and_ Ned’s shoes. It is the revelation of _his_ parentage (a la Joffrey) that sets off the drama, and _he_ is the one to tell the queen the truth (a la Ned).

The seasons _weirdly_ mimic each other. In s1, Sansa doesn’t want to leave Joffrey, in s8 she doesn’t want Jon to leave her, and in _both_ seasons she goes to a Lannister she trusts to avoid being separated from a boy/man she loves. The men who divulge the secret parentage of Joffrey/Jon end up imprisoned (Ned/Jon) with Sansa intervening on their behalf, securing the fate for Jon she begged for Ned. Our main characters relived bits of their own and others’ lives, becoming composites of what we’ve seen before. The more I think about it, the more I’m amazed at how much effort went into giving us the story D&D weren’t telling, and how badly they wrote the one they said they were. No judging though, we all aspire to different things.

This replay of what we’ve seen before happened in S7 with Jon in Mance’s position as referenced in the Jon/Tormund dialogue beyond the Wall. Dany is in the Stannis role (they share certain _tendencies_ \--burn, baby, burn), and Jon even delivers Mance’s line to Stannis to her, “I wish you good fortune in the wars to come,” but Dany also has moments that duplicate a younger Jon. At the time, Jon thought Mance wouldn’t kneel because of his pride, and Dany makes the same accusation to Jon. Of course, since then, Jon has been chosen by his people to lead them, and he better understands the price of kneeling. Mance told him it would cost everything he’s worked for, so he doesn’t kneel. _Jon does._ He overrules the will of his people to save them as a Stark king did before him, just as he once told Mance to do, just as Tormund advised him beyond the Wall. The narrative doesn’t condemn Jon because he accepts the anger and distrust of his people to protect them. This brings me back to Jon and the Ned cosplay. Ned _didn’t_ betray Cat, but that’s a secret he took with him to the grave. (Remember, I did warn you this was a wrong answer!)

We get a lot of incompatible ideas in s7-8, and while the way they chose to write it was nonsensical, there are definitely ideas being presented that are very interesting. Just as Jaime’s speech is about how wrong/right are sometimes impossible to unravel, Dany embodied that truth of good/evil. She saved the world; she was also a threat to it. In the finale script, they call her satanic and they _also_ direct her to be framed as Jesus in The Pieta. You can’t properly address any of these more complex ideas when the goal is shock and awe, leaving a lot of very disconcerting tidbits carelessly sprinkled in, but Dany is Stannis taken to an extreme. They had their goals and sacrificed more and more of themselves until they reached them. They may not _be_ monsters as we have come to expect them to be portrayed, but they behaved as them in the end. While they kept telling us Jon was Dany’s lapdog, Jon has always been a counterpoint to Dany. Dany is remorseless for her crimes; he is haunted by his failures. Obviously, how the two represent such different things is lost because they needed to hide the fact that Dany is a megalomaniac, but this idea resurfaces in Jon’s reaction to killing Dany. Dany thinks she is a god; Jon knows he is but a man. Instead of Dany’s “ _I know what is good_ ” we have Jon’s tormented “ _was it right?_ ”

The poignancy of that, the distinction between the two characters is totally destroyed when you think of the context for that question. That at that point Tyrion and Jon had been sitting in their cells for weeks (months?), smelling the scent of charred, decaying bodies, listening to the cries of those who were not fortunate enough to die quickly. If D&D had any interest in staying true to the anti-war theme they waved at a few times, they would have focused more on the victims rather than bemoaning the fact that their murderer was dead, _but_ , if we ignore the pandering to a certain portion of the fanbase, if we look back to our pattern established by the boys, we remember, Jon’s “heroic” act is meant to be horrific. It is meant to be a tragedy as much as a victory. There’s no winning, only different versions of defeat.

Jaime could have told Jon that. Aemon tried to warn him. Ned felt it too. But, just because those men felt constrained by their obligations, endured the pain of their choices, doesn’t mean they weren’t struggling. When the character is the conduit for the audience, he can’t know things before the audience does, so Jon can’t _verbally_ wrestle with anything satisfactorily or we would have known where this was going to end up. Choosing to make Jon’s identity struggle coincide with Dany’s destruction of KL was frustrating because the fate of the world just obliterates all the intimacy (and moral greyness) of what was transpiring. Jon was experiencing another one of his foil’s struggles:

Theon: “ _I’ve always wanted to the right thing. Be the right kind of person. But I never knew what that meant. It’s always seemed like there was **an impossible choice** I had to make. Stark or Greyjoy_.”

Jon: “ _You don’t need to **choose**. You’re a Greyjoy. And you’re a Stark._”

But Jon’s aunt grants him no clemency, and Jon’s assurance to Dany that they and the Starks “ _can live together”_ is met with a demand. They kept forestalling any revelations about where Jon would fall so that it could all be blended up and Jon would be forced to chug it in the finale:

Theon: “ _an impossible **choice**_ ”

Targaryen or Stark.

Tyrion: “ _you have to **choose** now_.”

Queen or Family.

Aemon: “ _in every man’s life, there comes a day when it is not easy. A day when he must **choose** ”_

Duty or Love.

Aemon bemoans the fact that he didn’t have the option to save his family. Ned died not knowing what would become of his. Jaime’s children died, one by one. Theon saved Yara but died not knowing if he had saved Bran. Jon got the chance to save the girls, and he took it. Jon chose the Starks. Not to end this by taking a bridge too far, but it kinda seems like there was personal significance to parentage reveal, that some of our overarching ideas were meant to reach a conclusion, that perhaps the poignancy in Jon’s choice was not meant to be the morally dubious decision of stopping a remorseless mass murderer, but the fact that just as Jon could escape the shame of being a bastard, he assumed the role of cursed kinslayer, queenslayer, oathbreaker to protect his family.

It's almost like it was inevitable that people who want to be free will defy a conqueror, that Jon would choose to side with the Starks rather than Dany, that no matter how conflicted Jon would be, he would never allow anyone to harm Arya. It’s almost like it was a foregone conclusion that Jon would fulfill his promise to protect Sansa, that there was a reason they gave him a pavlovian response to perceived threats to her in s6-7. It’s almost like there was symbolism in the dragon and wolf imagery, that choosing to be a dragon only leads to destruction and death while choosing to be a wolf means protecting the pack, survival, _life_. It’s almost as if, everything we needed to know was told to us a long time ago, and the problem was that D&D thought that winking at it, instead of writing it, was a good way to tell the story. It’s almost as if, Jon has a great story, a tragic one rather than a pathetic one, but they did not want to write it. The _only_ surprise in s8 was just how dedicated they were to their surprise, and what they were willing to do to Jon in service of it.

In the end, I think Jon _didn’t_ change. He was just a casualty.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on Quora back in May.


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